Pork Shoulder Tacos... and learning to love leftovers!

One of my (loose) new years resolutions was to buy better quality meat, but make it go further. It's something that has been surprisingly easy to stick to, with two simple rules being central to making it work: Buy larger, cheaper cuts, and never waste anything.

Trimming fat from a big cut of meat? Freeze those off-cuts and use em when you need extra flavour in the base of a dish - just fry them gently and then take the fat out of the pan once the oil has leached out, then chuck in some onions. Voila. Porky, beefy or chickeny flavoured onions! Great for the base of a pasta sauce.

Some cuts are just made for this sort of thing. Beef brisket, shoulder of lamb, or basically anything fatty and piggy. In this case it was a big slow-roasted pork shoulder that was providing the leftovers that I used in a smokey, spicy chilli, heady with garlic, ground cumin and smoked paprika.

Dished up inside baby gem lettuce (natures taco), sprinkled with cheddar and then a little salsa - made using chilli, tomato, onion, garlic and fresh coriander - it is a beautiful dish in itself and something which you would never think of as leftovers.

I enjoyed the lettuce tacos with an awesome beer from a brewery that is quickly becoming a go-to for me, Weird Beard, K*ntish Town Beard. It was a good match - with the fruity, lightly sweet wheat beer base matching well with the rich chilli and the citrusy, bitter hop flavours bouncing nicely off the spicy salsa.

It reminds me a little of Meine Hopfenweisse from Schneider Weisse, though with more bitterness and slightly less fruity banana yeast complexity. Still, top stuff from WB once again, and a beer I'll be buying again without hesitation.